“This could put off the decision day, by going round in circles,” he said.
Models recently floated include the leasing of stock by a council to a private company, the establishment of community mutual stock transfers and community land trusts.
The lease option could see organisations specially created to manage, maintain and improve stock over periods of up to 50 years.
Leasing proposals are being worked up between consultants and Bolton council, with the Royal Bank of Scotland looking into the fundability of the deal (Housing Today, 22 November).
But the option ran the risk of being “a policy fudge”, said Williams. “Government is under continuing pressure from local authorities who want to retain their stock,” he said. “But it could take us back to the difficulties that we got into through leasing arrangements in the 1970s.”
And Jeff Zitron, a director at housing consultant Hacas Chapman Hendy, said the community mutual option was not an alternative to stock transfer.
“What we are doing is developing a model which would enable tenants to have a guarantee to take on management and ownership in year two or five, at some future time,” he said.
Zitron urged the sector to see the community land trust concept, which Hacas is exploring through a Birmingham Council-based pilot, as being complementary to stock transfer.
Traditional equity release schemes often posed unacceptable risks for low-income homeowners, he said.
Adapting American ideas, a trust could take a charge from residents, allowing them to free equity.
Encouraging private sector renewal through enabling low-income homeowners to release equity, could prevent a small and declining owner occupier sector undermining regeneration delivered through social housing stock transfer, Zitron added.
Source
Housing Today
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